OFFICE 12

Despite the prevailing inclination towards the immateriality of the institution, this research project declares that the museum of the future is still a building. In an attempt to reinstate space as the principal element of a museum, the plan defines a sequence of rooms evolved from the classical layout of the Beaux-Arts gallery. Ranging in size, but essentially equal, these rooms assert the continuing viability of both the enfilade and the individualised loft as credible spaces for artistic creation and display. The series of rooms is divided by walls of translucent milky glass and encircled by a brick wall. In this way, the notion of transparency is appropriated as an integral part of the museum, while the limits of the public space are shifted to the perimeter. All the rooms have standard technical ceilings and wooden floors with plinths that provide frames for the opaque steel doors. Since the doors are always closed, the content of the structure remains ambiguous, and any room can support a cafeteria or a museum shop. Light enters only through the four entrance patios on each side. It filters through the glass walls of white cubes, losing its intensity over the adjacent rooms, up to the point where it generates a black box, making the distinction between the two irrelevant.